The Nutrition Facts Are Due For A Makeover—And Sugar is Causing A Stir

Can you figure out how much added sugar is in your favorite breakfast cereal or granola bar? You can read the packaging up, down, backwards, and sideways, but the answer is no. Current labeling standards don’t require manufacturers to disclose how much sweet stuff is added to food during production. But all that could soon change, thanks to a massive new proposal from the FDA.

In early 2014, the agency released a document listing an array of proposed changes to the Nutrition Facts label. The most talked-about tweak would change “Sugars” to “Total Sugars” and add new a line denoting “Added Sugars”—that is, any sweetness that doesn't occur naturally in a food. And it’s a stipulation that’s left a sour taste in big food manufacturer’s mouths.

Now, the FDA is reviewing more than 18,000 public comments on the issue. Doctors and groups like the American Heart Association chimed in with support. A whole lot of food manufacturing organizations (the American Beverage Association and Sugar Association, to name a few) submitted pleas for an extension of the comment period—requests collectively denied by the FDA.

First, there’s the history. Food manufacturers are likely spooked by the fate of a similarly controversial additive: trans fat. Since 2006, when the FDA began mandating trans fat labeling, the ingredient has all but disappeared from packaged foods. Outing certain products for their high sugar content could make them less popular with consumers (and translate to fewer sales).

Second, there’s the scientific gray area—because there’s still no definitive research showing that added sugars are more harmful to the body than natural ones. “We continue to recognize the lack of a physiological distinction between added and naturally occurring sugars,” the FDA writes, and opponents have latched onto that uncertainty. If sugar is sugar, they claim, why bother calculating how much is added?

But there’s a subtler difference between the two that the FDA does recognize. Eat 40 grams of added sugar from foods like candy or soda, and sugar is about all you get. “But fruits, vegetables, dairy products, naturally occurring sugars in grain products—they offer more,” says Wendy Bazilian, author of The SuperFoodsRx Diet. “There’s sugar in them, but they’re packaged with other things that are good for us. They don’t run alone.”

Then, of course, there’s that teeny tiny consideration of a consumer’s right to know what’s been added into food (remember that?). In a world where sugar can go by 57 different names, we need every bit of nutritional information we can get our hands on. Finally, the FDA thinks so, too—though Bazilian estimates that, if the proposal passes, it could be 3 to 4 years before we see changes enacted.

Something tells us we’ll be passing the time with a salty snack instead.